We had left the Cathedral far behind. Whenever we looked back, so long as any light was in the sky, we could see it standing dark and brooding against the horizon. We had by now travelled off the maps in our possession, by means of which we had been following our journey. The Colonel, seated beside the driver of the leading lorry, gave him his directions. He alone was aware of where we were going. But we knew by the wholesale demolition that this was one of the main national roads which had been most fiercely contested in the spring fighting, before the headlong rush of the Hun had been stopped. The tracks of the railroad, which paralleled it, had been torn from their bed. Bridges had been blown up. Improvised forts had been constructed in hollows where an advance could be checked by machine-gun fire. In my memory vivid descriptions recurred of the stubborn resistance which our men had put up. They had retreated and retreated, overpowered by weight of numbers. They had been deprived of water and food and sleep, and still they had fought on. Their officers had been killed: their N. C. O.s were gone; they had lost touch with their units, and yet they had never lost their sense of conquest—they dug their toes in and fought on. Along this very road they had crawled on hands and knees when they could no longer walk; but they had crawled backwards, with their faces always towards the enemy, who followed them staggering drunkenly in his steps from exhaustion. There were German battalions which had marched forty miles at a stretch, only to be shot down by these broken Tommies who never knew when they were beaten. As the agony of the spring became more and more obvious a cold anger grew in our hearts. We were going to revenge that mud-stained mob who ought to have been beaten, but had won by their own invincible doggedness. From graves in the darkness the anonymous dead watched us pass.